gluteal pain!!!

Okay...my butt hurts! I have been a runner for years, done a few tri's, but not alot in the last couple of years. Over the past year I've had an increasingly worsening pain in my right glute muscles. Not so much the minimus, but lower down. I thought maybe the joint was getting arthritic or something, but it seems to definitely be the muscle. I did a couple of the tests to see if it was the little two inch muscle in the glutes (starts w/ an F), but it doesn't seem to be that.
It hurts when I get up out of a low couch and even a kitchen chair, almost like a spasm about when I'm halfway standing. When I walk it feels better, when I workout, doing squats,running,eliptical, nothing. But it's getting worse. If I stand up quicker it's not as bad. Or , if I hold my butt up as I rise, it's not so bad.
Any thoughts about this butt problem? :) thank you....:)